This volume examines the historical end of the Platonic tradition in relation to creation theories of the natural world through Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus (412-485) elaboration of an investigation of Plato's theory of metaphysical archetypal Forms.

Paul and the Greco-Roman Philosophical Tradition provides a fresh examination of the relationship of Greco-Roman philosophy to Pauline Christianity. It offers an in-depth look at different approaches employed by scholars who draw upon philosophical settings in the ancient world to inform their understanding of Paul. The volume houses an international team of scholars from a range of diverse traditions and backgrounds, which opens up a platform for multiple voices from various corridors. Consequently, some of the chapters seek to establish new potential resonances with Paul and the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, but others question such connections. While a number of them propose radically new relationships between Paul and GrecoRoman philosophy, a few seek to tweak or modulate current discussions. There are arguments in the volume which are more technical and exegetical, and others that remain more synthetic and theological. This diversity, however, is accentuated by a goal shared by each author - to further our understanding of Paul's relationship to and appropriation of Greco-Roman philosophical traditions in his literary and missionary efforts.

This book offers the first comprehensive evaluation of ethics in the ancient Greek novel, demonstrating how their representation of the cardinal virtue sophrosune positions these texts in their literary, philosophical and cultural contexts. Sophrosune encompasses the dispositions and psychological states of temperance, self-control, chastity, sanity and moderation. The Greek novels are the first examples of lengthy prose fiction in the Greek world, composed between the first century BCE and the fourth century CE. Each novel is concerned with a pair of beautiful, aristocratic lovers who undergo trials and tribulations, before a successful resolution is reached. Bird focuses on the extant examples of the genre (Chariton’s Callirhoe, Xenophon of Ephesus’ Ephesiaca, Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon and Heliodorus’ Aethiopica), which all have the virtue of sophrosune at their heart. As each pair of lovers strives to retain their chastity in the face of adversity, and under extreme pressure from eros, it is essential to understand how this virtue is represented in the characters within each novel. Invited modes of reading also involve sophrosune, and the author provides an important exploration of how sophrosune in the reader is both encouraged and undermined by these works of fiction.

Olympiodorus (AD c. 500-570), possibly the last non-Christian teacher of philosophy in Alexandria, delivered 28 lectures as an introduction to Plato. This volume translates lectures 10-28, following from the first nine lectures and a biography of the philosopher published in translation in a companion volume, Olympiodorus: Life of Plato and On Plato First Alcibiades 1-9 (Bloomsbury, 2014). For us, these lectures can serve as an accessible introduction to late Neoplatonism. Olympiodorus locates the First Alcibiades at the start of the curriculum on Plato, because it is about self-knowledge. His pupils are beginners, able to approach the hierarchy of philosophical virtues, like the aristocratic playboy Alcibiades. Alcibiades needs to know himself, at least as an individual with particular actions, before he can reach the virtues of mere civic interaction. As Olympiodorus addresses mainly Christian students, he tells them that the different words they use are often symbols of truths shared between their faiths.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Socrates, edited by Christopher Moore, provides almost unbroken coverage, across three-dozen studies, of 2450 years of philosophical and literary engagement with Socrates - the singular Athenian intellectual, paradigm of moral discipline, and inspiration for millennia of philosophical, rhetorical, and dramatic composition. Following an Introduction reflecting on the essentially "receptive" nature of Socrates' influence (by contrast to Plato's), chapters address the uptake of Socrates by authors in the Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, Late Antique (including Latin Christian, Syriac, and Arabic), Medieval (including Byzantine), Renaissance, Early Modern, Late Modern, and Twentieth-Century periods. Together they reveal the continuity of Socrates' idiosyncratic, polyvalent, and deep imprint on the history of Western thought, and witness the value of further research in the reception of Socrates.

Stephen Scully both offers a reading of Hesiod's Theogony and traces the reception and shadows of this authoritative Greek creation story in Greek and Roman texts up to Milton's own creation myth, which sought to "soar above th' Aonian Mount [i.e., the Theogony] ... and justify the ways of God to men." Scully also considers the poem in light of Near Eastern creation stories, including the Enuma elish and Genesis, as well as the most striking of modern "scientific myths," Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. Scully reads Hesiod's poem as a hymn to Zeus and a city-state creation myth, arguing that Olympus is portrayed as an idealized polity and - with but one exception - a place of communal harmony. This reading informs his study of the Theogony's reception in later writings about polity, discord, and justice. The rich and various story of reception pays particular attention to the long Homeric Hymns, Solon, the Presocratics, Pindar, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Plato in the Archaic and Classical periods; to the Alexandrian scholars, Callimachus, Euhemerus, and the Stoics in the Hellenistic period; to Ovid, Apollodorus, Lucan, a few Church fathers, and the Neoplatonists in the Roman period. Tracing the poem's reception in the Byzantine, medieval, and early Renaissance, including Petrarch and Erasmus, the book ends with a lengthy exploration of Milton's imitations of the poem in Paradise Lost. Scully also compares what he considers Hesiod's artful interplay of narrative, genealogical lists, and keen use of personified abstractions in the Theogony to Homeric narrative techniques and treatment of epic verse.

The Greek commentary tradition devoted to explicating Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (NE) was extensive. It began in antiquity with Aspasius and reached a point of immense sophistication in the twelfth century with the commentaries of Eustratius of Nicaea and Michael of Ephesus, which primarily served educational purposes. The use of Aristotle's ethics in the classroom continued into the late Byzantine period, but until recently scholastic use of the NE was known mostly through George Pachymeres' epitome of the NE (Book 11 of his Philosophia). This volume radically changes the landscape by providing the editio princeps of the last surviving exegetical commentary on the NE stricto sensu, also penned by Pachymeres. This represents a new witness to the importance of Aristotelian studies in the cultural revival of late Byzantium. The editio princeps is accompanied by an English translation and a thorough introduction, which offers an informed reading of the commentary's genre and layout, relationship to its sources, exegetical strategies, and philosophical originality. This book also includes the edition of diagrams and scholia accompanying Pachymeres' exegesis, whose paratextual function is key to a full understanding of the work.

Returning to the Greek understanding of art to rethink its capacities, Creation and the Function of Art focuses on the relationship between techne and phusis (nature). Moving away from the theoretical Platonism which dominates contemporary understandings of art, this book instead reinvigorates Aristotelian causation. Beginning with the Greek topos and turning to insights from philosophy, pure mathematics, psychoanalysis and biology, Jason Tuckwell re-problematises techne in functional terms. This book examines the deviations at play within logical forms, the subject, and upon phusis to better situate the role of the function in poiesis (art). In so doing, Tuckwell argues that art concerns a genuinely creative labour that cannot be resolved via an ontological or epistemological problem, but which instead constitutes an encounter with the problematic. As such, techne is shown to be a property of the living, of intelligence coupled to action, that not only enacts poiesis or art, but indicates a broader role for creative deviation in nature.